


Ottawa & Gatineau

by butwordsarewind (sungabraverday)



Series: Cities Headcanons [7]
Category: Paris Burning (thecitysmith)
Genre: Canada, Gen, Twin Cities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 10:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungabraverday/pseuds/butwordsarewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ottawa and Gatineau are Twin Cities - a lot alike, a lot different, but forever tied together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ottawa & Gatineau

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Paris Burning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/825130) by [thecitysmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecitysmith/pseuds/thecitysmith). 



Ottawa and Gatineau are Twin Cities. Sometimes they like to ignore it, because they are so very different. Ottawa is larger, more powerful, English. She’s more politic, more calm and controlled. Gatineau is smaller and weaker and French, and often forgotten. But lest you think that Gatineau is somehow less than Ottawa, she will have you know that she is very independent, and she is fiesty and artistic to boot. They are different, in ways that are impossible to explain but evident in moments. But they are Twin Cities nevertheless, spilling into each other, and inseparable even for death.

They have the matching scars, of course. The 1900 fire may have burned most of old Hull to the ground, but it spread to Ottawa on the western bank of the river, and left them clutching together, fires raging through their streets. Though Ottawa was the Capital, she could feel Gatineau weakening, and herself with her twin. And Gatineau felt Ottawa’s presence and knew that she couldn’t fall until Ottawa fell, and she was the Capital and that was unfathomable. It was terrifying, but they pulled through. They’ve always pulled through, together.

Even now, they’re connected with the same solidity as back then. Ottawa needs Gatineau, for it is with Gatineau at her side that she can hold the Quebec Cities in check. If they kill her, they kill one of their own, and they cannot afford that loss. And Gatineau holds some of the buildings that maybe ought to be Ottawa’s - offices, mostly, for the civil service, but a museum too, one of the greatest in the country. Gatineau gains too, gains people to fill her streets, and interest, and power that she’d have no other way.

You can see them often, walking together, around the river that divides them. They’re the two solitudes, but they’re not solitary: they are one. No one could ever challenge Ottawa for her title as Capital, not seriously. They couldn’t hope to match that.


End file.
